Boston Deftly Mixes Old, New

BOSTON — As every schoolchild knows, Boston has played a chief role in our country's history.

This is the seacoast city of the Tea Party, Samuel Adams' revolutionary orations, Paul Revere's midnight ride, the Battle of Bunker Hill and the proud Yankee clipper ships of the China Trade.

Much of the city's appeal is linked with the past. Boston is a charming place with gas lamps and crooked streets, and such preserved attractions as Federalist-era Beacon Hill, the Victorian Back Bay and the serene Public Garden with its famous fleet of Swan Boats.

But contemporary Boston is by no means just a Colonial museum piece, a remnant of stuffy Victorianism. The city has undergone a great deal of change, both physical and sociological, over the past decade. Building renovation and new construction work is still very prevalent, especially in the financial district and along the entire stretch of stylish Boylston Street.

Yet despite all of that activity, the essential Boston -- intimate, gracious, refined and even quaint -- survives. There's an intriguing blend of the old and the new here, more so than in other American cities, and in most cases it works well and adds an extra dimension to Boston's urbane attractiveness. Here are four prime examples of past-and-present combinations in Boston:

Faneuil Hall Marketplace. The three long market buildings adjacent to historic Faneuil Hall date from 1826. They've been transformed into a wildly popular -- and nationally trend-setting -- accumulation of shops, cafes, food stalls and nightspots. Visitors can walk from there to the waterfront to see granite wharf buildings and even a power station that has been turned into apartments and condominiums.

Also at harborside is the ultramodern New England Aquarium and the Marriott Long Wharf, a red-brick hotel built in the shape of the wharves to fit neatly into the surroundings. While in the marketplace and waterfront area, visitors are just a stroll away from the Italian North End and Old North Church (''one if by land, two if by sea''), built in 1723.

South End/Copley Place. A look at the South End is fascinating for various reasons. The neighborhood offers the city's biggest display of 18th- century bow-front dwellings and has a broad ethnic mix. Residential squares like Union Park and Rutland Square are London look-alikes. Adjacent Copley Place, by contrast, is a megasize shopping complex that doesn't seem like historic Boston at all, but adds many fine new restaurants and stores (including Neiman-Marcus) to Back Bay. Cross the street from here to Copley Square with Romanesque Trinity Church, built in 1877, mirrored in the glass facade of the tall and sleek Hancock Tower. The Christian Science Center and its domed church in a lagoon and garden setting is also conveniently close to Copley Place.

Fort Pont Channel/Computer Museum. A replica of the English brigantine Beaver is docked on the channel. Come on board to get the spirit of the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773, which ignited the Revolutionary War. Then continue across the channel bridge to a cluster of brick buildings that were wool warehouses a century ago. One now houses The Computer Museum, the world's first and only museum devoted to the history and development of computers over the past 40 years. The Boston location of this attraction is appropriate, because the vitality that's so evident downtown is based in large part on high-tech brainpower, inventiveness and initiative.

Cambridge and Harvard Square. A 60-cent ride on America's first subway, constructed in 1897, gets you to America's first university, built in 1636. Harvard Square is a great people-watching place, and this always-lively mecca in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston, is also terrific for shopping.

Bookstores are in abundance, and the scope of the classical record department in a university-affiliated department store locally called the Harvard Coop is astonishing. From the big, new subway station, you'll emerge onto a square that has just been widened and extensively paved in brick. The academic buildings of Harvard Yard and the vicinity range from 18th-century classic to 20th-century avant-garde. The yard itself is crisscrossed by walkways and shaded by age-old trees.

While the university's Fogg and Busch-Reisinger Art Museums get proper acclaim for their collections (Van Gogh and Cezanne in the former, Klimt and Klee in the latter), a third Harvard museum had been getting acclaim for its bravura architecture. This is the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, next door to the Fogg, designed by British architect James Stirling. The modernistic Sackler houses the university's prized collection of Oriental, Islamic and ancient Greek and Roman art.

Good things to see and do are close to one another in the compact city of Boston, and riding the subway is the fast and cheap way to get over to Cambridge.

The Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau has two visitor information booths, open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. One is in the Prudential Center, the other is on the Tremont Street side of the Boston Common. For information in advance, write to the Bureau at P.O. Box 490, Prudential Plaza, Boston, Mass. 02199. The phone number is (617) 536-4100.